NSA Spying and the Imperial Presidency: A Town Hall

C-Span is currently broadcasting a great discussion on separation of powers issues dealing with the NSA domestic spying, national security matters, privacy considerations and the imperial presidency. The discussion includes Mary DeRosa, Lawrence Tribe, John Dean, Jim Harper, Anthony Romero, and Marvin Kalb, and is truly fascinating stuff.

I’m working on a longer post on the NSA issue and other foreign policy concerns that have been raised, but I wanted to spotlight this discussion for those who care to watch it. If you can’t watch today, try and catch it in re-run — it’s that good.

(Cartoon via the Cincinnati Post. Hat tip to reader angie for the heads up on this.)

UPDATE: C-Span’s programming schedule indicates that this Town Hall will be re-broadcast this evening at 9 pm ET on C-Span1. If and when they post a transcript, I’ll put a link on this post. It was a great discussion, some good give and take among the participants and some excellent audience questions as well. Best line: Lawrence Tribe’s "the Bush Administration is collecting more dots, but they aren’t connecting them" (or something to that effect) in relation to the NSA domestic spying program.

Christy Hardin Smith

Christy is a "recovering" attorney, who earned her undergraduate degree at Smith College, in American Studies and Government, concentrating in American Foreign Policy. She then went on to graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania in the field of political science and international relations/security studies, before attending law school at the College of Law at West Virginia University, where she was Associate Editor of the Law Review. Christy was a partner in her own firm for several years, where she practiced in a number of areas including criminal defense, child abuse and neglect representation, domestic law, civil litigation, and she was an attorney for a small municipality, before switching hats to become a state prosecutor. Christy has extensive trial experience, and has worked for years both in and out of the court system to improve the lives of at risk children.